merger

The filters that govern mainstream journalism sometimes produce sentences that are simply hilarious. Reporting today on the proposed merger between the Comcast and Time-Warner media profit fiefdoms, The New York Times notes that “the deal, if completed, could have impacts on consumers across the country, though it is unlikely to reduce competition in many markets.”

SEGUIN, Texas (Reuters) — General Motors Co. Chairman Ed Whitacre on Tuesday urged the Obama administration to give the automaker less restrictive pay caps and said it was too early to discuss the timing for the automaker to become a public company again.

Cash salaries for the top executives were cut by 31 percent, and only one unnamed executive besides Henderson will be paid more than $500,000 for 2009.

Whitacre said that $500,000 limit made hiring from outside difficult, and he urged a reconsideration of the limits set by the Treasury Department’s special master Kenneth Feinberg. (Source: Automotive News, November 11, 2009)

And what would we all do without glorious breakthroughs like the AT&T-Bell South merger? Sure, 10,000 people lost their jobs in that process, and it also further entrenched the institutional basis for the world’s highest telecommunications bills.

But, look, those things are good for investors, aren’ t they? And, just as anybody can sleep under a bridge, soare we all perfectly free to become major investors. All you have to do is get yourself $10 or 20 million to get yourself started.

And Ed and his pals probably lost a lot of their $61 million pay packets last year, too, right? Just like the rest of us, right? Aren’t you down to your last few dozen millions yourself? I know I am.

Besides, it’s got to be a rather thankless task, this acting as the funeral director who keeps insisting the guy in the box is still alive…